


Hebert Family Values

by ellf



Category: Addams Family - All Media Types, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Altogether Ooky, Creepy, Family, Kooky, mysterious and spooky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 15:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15392082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellf/pseuds/ellf
Summary: Taylor comes home from the Lung fight to find the lights on with someone over.   Turns out Annette's alive.  She's been with her birth family.  They're creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky.   And they're moving to Brockton Bay.





	1. Chapter 1

Credo 1.1

***********

That wasn’t right.  When I left the house, all of the lights had been extinguished. I’d made sure of it.  There definitely hadn’t been what looked like a modified hearse in the driveway.   I frowned underneath my mask.   At least the lights around back still seemed to be off, but why was there a _hearse_ in the driveway?   Stranger still were the spiders that made their home inside the hearse.   I could feel all nine hundred and fifty-four of them as they were added to my swarm.   I mentally had them continue what they were working on as I made my way around the house to the back.  Near as I could tell, whoever was in my house was more toward the front.  There were definitely more bugs in the house than when I left.  A concentration of twenty spiders nested atop something tall.   Maggots fed upon something rotting above the ground in the living room.   A single… rather large… tarantula was in a terrarium in the bedroom next to mine.  

Something was going on, and I didn’t know what.  Regardless, I couldn’t be in costume when I found out.  I didn’t want Dad to know that I went out and fought _Lung_ tonight, and showing up in costume was an easy way to have that happen.   I crept up to the back door and peered inside.   Good.  The path was clear to the basement door.   No Dad, no… whoever owned the hearse.   The bugs remained in the living room or upstairs.   I wasn’t going to make them budge beyond their natural movements.  It had been one hell of a night already.  

I opened the door as quietly as I could and slipped inside.  

“Brilliant home you have here, Daniel!” a man’s voice came from the living room, shouting.  “Why, it almost reminds me of ours.   It needs a little love and care, but it can be great quickly.”

Great.  Maybe that was one of Dad’s coworkers.  That drove a _hearse_.  I just needed to get my costume off.  I opened the basement door and paused.  There were more than just Dad in the living room.  I did a mental check of the hallway and found it clear.

“Thanks, but could you be a bit quieter?  It’s a school night, after all.”  Dad’s voice had been level, as if he were trying to stay calm.

“Couldn’t we just wake her anyway, Danny?” I froze.  That voice.  I would never forget that voice.  It couldn’t be her.  “We can keep her home from school and she can meet everyone.”

My heart froze in my chest.   _Mom_.  That sounded like _Mom_ , but that was impossible.   She’d died in that car accident three years ago.  Her body had been burned beyond all recognition, but she’d died.   I knew there’d been people in the room before, more than just Dad, but now that I focused on it, I could get a sense of how many were there.   Six people were in the living room, one with spiders in their hair, another with maggots… in a very strange place to have maggots.

If that really was Mom in the living room, I wanted to see her.  If it wasn’t, I wanted to see the person who had stolen my mother’s voice and fooled my father.   Plus, I supposed, whoever it was that came there with her.  God, wasn’t it enough that I had fought Lung tonight? I nearly _died_ , and now I had someone that seemed to be my dead mother?  I needed to find out if it was actually her.

Slipping off my costume and putting on a pair of jeans, a hoodie and my glasses, I sent a few flies to sweep the hallway.  It seemed clear.  Nobody would see me climbing out of the basement.   Then I could come from the hall into the living room and pretend I came from upstairs.  If that really was Mom…  I really just needed to find out one way or the other.

The moment I saw what stood on the other side of the basement door, I gasped in surprise.   It shouldn’t have been possible.  I should have sensed it.  Him.  Whatever.   He looked like a man, but  he was no man I’d ever seen before.   He was pale and hairless with sunken eyes.  He had pudgy hands that stuck out the sleeves of a black greatcoat with an enormous collar. The coat covered his hunched back that made his stance so menacing.   I acted on reflex, the way I had with Lung.  I fished my pepper spray out my pocket and sprayed the can right in his eyes.  Nothing could have prepared me for his reaction.  Nothing at all.

He laughed.  He’d taken pepper spray in the face and _laughed._ Who did that?  “Ooh!  Yes, that’s the stuff!  What is that?  Pepper spray?  It’s nice pepper spray, hit me again!”

I blinked, completely nonplussed.  I mean, how is someone supposed to react to that? 

“I…  okay.”   I sprayed him again, a bit longer that time, and after I finished, he clutched his head and shook it like a dog.  

“Ooh, yes, that’s just right!”  He laughed like a madman. Who was this person?  “Perfect.  Can I borrow that? I’ve got a hot date on Friday night, and I want some good cologne for it.”

He blinked, and though his eyes were slightly red, they barely seemed to be much worse off than before.   He grinned at me, and I held out the can of pepper spray.   Maybe he had some sort of brute ability that made it feel good? At least he seemed somewhat friendly.  I lightly pushed at the bugs within my range.  I needed to not antagonize him.

“I guess...”

“Perfect!”  He took the can and instantly pulled me into a hug against his soft fur coat.  I stiffened at the contact.   “Oh, this is perfect, a new cologne for me and meeting Netty’s family.   She really missed them, we could tell.”

Netty?  Did he mean Annette?  I suppose that could have been a nickname for my mother.  That still didn’t explain why he was _hugging me_.  I wriggled in his grip, trying to get loose.  I’d resort to bugs if I had to.

“Let go, please,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could.  Luckily, he did let go, and I pushed away.   He kept an eye on me, but he said nothing.      “Wait…  who are you, exactly?”

He looked down for a second, bashful, though no color reached his cheeks.   “Oh, that’s right.  Wait, you’re Taylor, right?   Netty’s daughter?  I’m your uncle!  Fester!”

Uncle?   Both my parents were only children.  What did he mean uncle?  What kind of parent names their kid _Fester,_ for that matter?  It had to be a nickname.   Still, best not to antagonize the brute when he was being friendly.  Wait.  Maybe Fester was his cape name.  Did that mean he was a villain?   He certainly looked the part, but I was no stranger to edgy costumes.   That still didn’t explain the uncle part.  

“Y-yeah, I’m Taylor.  Nice to meet you.”   I managed to keep my nervousness out of my voice.   He was just… one more thing after a day like today.   A strange cape in my house claiming to be my uncle.  Why hadn’t my flies found him?  It was like I couldn’t even bring any of my bugs close to him at all.    Some sort of natural insect repellent?

This was just too much to deal with.  My bed called me from upstairs, but I refused.  There was a strange cape down here, and Mom was maybe in the living room with more people.   Dad definitely was in the living room, and if there were strange capes there, I needed to protect him.   We might not have been as close anymore, but he was still my father.  

“Good!”  Fester said as he wrapped an arm around me.  What was with this cape and the physical contact?  “Come on then, let’s go bring you to the others.  You’re awake, everyone can meet you.”   He started dragging me toward the living room, and I didn’t have much choice but to follow.   “All right, everyone!  Look who I found!  She even greeted me correctly!   Pepper spray, right in my eyes! It was perfect!”

When we got to the living room, my eyes locked on one person and one person only.   She was tall and willowy, with dark curly hair hanging down her back.  She wore a long elegant green evening gown that went all the way to the floor, and she leaned against the easy chair my father sat in.   Her dark eyes, covered by a pair of trendy glasses locked with my own, and my heart stilled for a second.  I could feel her gentle warmth from where I stood, held by Fester.   I just…  I knew.  I knew in that instant that she was really here.  She was my mother and she was really here.

It was a miracle.  Mom was alive and _here_.

I pulled away from the man who claimed he was my uncle, and I ran up to my mother, wrapping my arms around her.   She was my _mother_.   I could feel her heart beating as my head laid on her chest, and I sniffled a little. I might have even started to tear up.  With the day’s events, who could blame me?  It was just the perfect capstone to my day.   It felt almost too good to be true.  This was real, right?

“Oh, Little Owl, it’s good to see you,” Mom said, a smile touching her wide mouth.   “I’m so sorry that I was away.”

“We thought…  I thought… You’re really here, Mom.  You’re really here...” I shook my head.  “How are you here?”

“Well, that’s because she’s an Addams, of course,” said a well-dressed man that I’d passed over in my first glance in the room.  He wore an extravagant striped suit, had a pencil-thin mustache, slicked-back black hair, and he stood just under my father’s height.  He was a stocky man, not exactly good looking, but he had a joyful warmth to him that was shared by my mother.  He stood next to a beautiful dark-haired woman that was taller than he.   Where Mom’s or my hair was long and curly, hers was long and straight. She wore a gothic black dress, and, huh.  She was the one who had spiders in her hair.  “We’re made of strong stock.   It’ll take far more than a measly car accident to do my sister in.”

“Sister,” I said, glancing to Mom.  “I thought you were an only child.”

“She’s the youngest of three, my young niece,” said the man.  “Fester, my brother is the oldest, I’m in the middle, and dearest Netty is younger than me by a year and a half.”

“Why haven’t we ever heard of you?” I asked, my tears drying up as I brought my focus to the conversation.  He’d sounded sincere, even with his bombast.   Still, he hadn’t introduced himself.   He claimed Mom as family though and brought her back.  That gave some leeway.

“My husband thought her lost, thirty years ago, in the Bermuda Triangle,” said the woman standing next to him.      Her voice was languid and breathy, but she had a fire to her.   “Imagine our surprise when she showed up after a car accident.”

“I was lost in that plane crash too,” Fester said.   “Netty was the one flying the plane.”

“Only with you as a copilot, brother dear,” Mom said.   “And someone wanted to taste the lightning, so we flew right into a storm.”

Plane crash?  Mom survived not only a car crash that was supposed to have killed her but she also survived a plane crash into the Bermuda Triangle?   How was that even possible?  My so-called uncle claimed it was because she was an Addams.   Was Mom a cape _too?_

I glanced to Dad to see how he was taking things.  He had one arm wrapped tightly around Mom’s back and a happy little smile plastered to his face.   However, he fidgeted in his seat a little, tapping his right foot on the ground.  If it weren’t for Mom, he’d probably be pacing along the ground right now.   For his sake and my own, I needed to get some clarity.

“So you were traveling with him,” I said, gesturing to Fester.  I needed to be calm for Mom, since this was really her.  “Because he’s your brother.  Meaning he’s really my uncle?”

“Gomez is as well,” Mom said.   “And his wife Morticia is the one who so kindly helped me pick out this dress.”

“And it looks beautiful on you, ma belle-soeur,” Morticia complimented.  She seemed kind enough.  “Though it _would_ be better in black, like your daughter’s hoodie.”

“Tish, that’s French!”  The man who apparently was my other uncle grabbed his wife’s arm and started kissing along it.  “You know what that does to me.  Cara Mia!”

“Apparently, they get amorous when she speaks in a foreign language,” Dad said, rubbing Mom’s back and then patting my arm with his other hand.   His foot tapped a little faster as he watched.  “That’s happened at least twice this evening.”

“How long have they been here?”  I asked.

“They showed up about fifteen minutes after you made your snack.   I’m surprised you didn’t hear them arrive,” Dad said, tapping the chair with his free hand.  “I would have thought you’d have answered the door since you were up.”

“She must have fallen asleep after she finished it, Danny,” Mom said.  “It’s not like she was sneaking out at all hours of the night to perform acts of grand larceny.   Yet.”

“Why would I be performing acts of grand larceny?” I asked. 

“It’s what I did at your age, Taylor,” Mom said simply.  I couldn’t even tell if she was messing with me.   She did run with Lustrum once, after all.  “I returned the ghost ship.  Eventually.”

Okay.  She was definitely teasing, and I loved it.

“As fascinating as that is, Annette, I think Taylor should get to bed, even if we are letting her stay home from school tomorrow,” Dad said abruptly.  “She still has more people to meet tomorrow, since they’re already in bed.”

A yawn escaped me at that moment.  Dad was right.  I should be going to bed.  My muscles were starting to get sore from all the activity I put them through today, and despite seeing Mom, I was about eighty percent sure she’d still be here in the morning.

“My, you look practically dead on your feet.  Your father’s right, Taylor.  I’ll make sure to have Lurch help get you up to your room,” Mom said.

“Lurch?” I asked, and Mom smirked.  She reached her hand up and wrapped it around a hangman’s noose that I swear wasn’t there before.  When she pulled it, a loud scream echoed out through the house.  A few seconds later, a tall stitched-together looking man appeared.  He wore a finely pressed suit, had a large forehead, and inside his right elbow, he had a colony of maggots.  He’d been just in the other room, standing near the front door, but I wasn’t sure how he’d come to our side so fast.

“You rang?” asked the man as he looked to my mother.

“Yes, Lurch.  Could you help my daughter get upstairs to her bed?   Help her make sure that Wednesday’s toys aren’t on it before she gets in.”

“Toys?” I asked.   Who was Wednesday and why would their toys be in my bed?

“Caltrops, knives, poisoned needles,” Mom said dismissively.  “You need a decent night’s sleep, and I wouldn’t want you to step on something in the middle of the night if you had to use the bathroom.   That can wait for morning.”

“Stepping on caltrops, knives, or poisoned needles can wait till morning?” I asked, my voice raising in tone.

“Or the afternoon if you prefer,” Mom said simply. “Whenever you play with your cousins.”

“What kind of play involves knives, caltrops or needles?” I asked.

“This kind!” Uncle Fester charged across the living room at Uncle Gomez and his wife.  Gomez grabbed him by the arm and flipped Fester over his shoulder, tossing him at the wall, upside-down. 

“What are you doing?” Dad stood up as Gomez produced two handfuls of large knives and tossed all of them in the direction he’d thrown my uncle.   I just stared.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I’d seen someone literally light themselves on fire that evening.  “Gomez...”

“Just watch, Daniel!” Gomez said loudly as Fester hit the wall followed by a series of thunks as the knives Gomez threw perfectly outlined his older brother.  

“See?” Uncle Fester said with a grin.   “Just like this.”

I paused for a second, taking in the sight of something that was far too impressive.   How had my uncles managed to pull that off?  How long had they practiced?

“Boys will be boys,” Mom said, shaking her head as if this was something _common_.  “Even when they’re grown men, they still love showing off.”

“That’s my wall that’ll need repairing, Gomez,” Dad said.  He wasn’t quite angry yet, but it was coming. 

“Is that all?” Uncle Gomez asked.   “Lurch will take care of it tonight, don’t worry.”

Lurch grunted in the affirmative.   At least, that was the impression I got, and combined with Mom wrapping her arms around Dad, his anger abated some.  

“You sure you don’t mind?” Dad asked, looking at the man.   Lurch responded with a grunt that seemed to be reassuring, and Dad nodded.  “I’ll trust you.”

“Oh, and Lurch, my good man,” Gomez said, wrapping his arms around his wife.  “Could you make sure that when Grandmama gets the house here, it’s placed right next-door?”

Lurch groaned in the affirmative, and then he gestured to me.   He groaned again, as I moved toward him.   I paused, however, when I stepped near my uncle. 

“What do you mean, get the house here?” I asked. 

“Oh, that’s simple, Taylor,” my uncle said.  “The Addams Family is moving to Brockton Bay.”

Well, given that they brought Mom back, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.   Sure, they might have been weird, and my cousin might have had a strange relationship with sharp objects, but that didn’t mean they were all that bad.   I suppose I’d just have to see.

I was a superhero, after all.


	2. Credo 1.2

My morning routine since returning home from the hospital after obtaining my powers followed the same pattern: get up, get dressed, and go for a jog.   Today was no different, despite the events of the previous evening.   I grimaced a little at the damage to my hair’s ends as I brushed it out.  If I’d been half a second slower, or if the Undersiders had failed to help, more than just my hair would have been burned.  Somehow, that didn’t scare me as much as it should have.   Instead, excitement blossomed when I thought about it.  I’d survived _Lung_ , and then when I got home, I found out my mom was _alive_. 

Adjusting my hoodie and track pants, I made my way downstairs.  Dad was nowhere to be seen, and in fact, he wasn’t in the house at all.   I felt two other teenagers still sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms, Morticia’s spiders scurrying about her dress and back into her hair, Mom stirring in the master bedroom, and I felt ninety-three maggots in the arm of the man standing next to the doorway.   He’d been helpful in getting me into my bedroom last night, but I wasn’t sure what to think about the towering man.  Something about him just seemed imposing, yet at the same time, he seemed friendly enough.

“Lurch, right?” I asked, greeting him.   He answered with an affirmative grunt and gave me a look up and down before groaning.   From what I could gather, he was concerned about what I was planning on doing.   Sure, he hadn’t exactly answered in words, but he expressed concern.    He was a guest of our house, and he cared enough to ask even though we’d just met.   It didn’t make sense to just leave him hanging.   “I’m heading for my morning jog.   I’ve been trying to get in shape.”

Lurch gave a nod and a small grunt indicating he understood.  He held up a hand and groaned again.   Evidently he wanted me to wait for a second.   I owed him the benefit of the doubt, so I waited as he stepped out of the foyer and into the living room.  After a few seconds, strange banging noises started up in the living room, causing me to glance nervously at the door.   The yowl of a cat nearly made me jump. _Where had that come from?_    Then Lurch stepped back into the foyer.   He wore a pair of black bike shorts, a black muscle shirt, sneakers, and a sweatband around his forehead.   His body type didn’t indicate athletics at all, yet here he was, dressed for the part as he groaned at me again.

After staring at the sight for a few seconds, trying to force myself to realize that yes, it was real, I sighed.   “Fine.  You can come with me.”

Lurch smiled.  I almost wish he hadn’t.  Without going into too much detail, Lurch had the kind of smile that only a mother could love.   On a corpse.  Six feet under.  Where she couldn’t see it.   I was just lucky enough that  it lasted only a few seconds, and I had yet to eat breakfast that morning.    Suppressing a shudder, I opened the door so we could get going.

I never took the exact same jogging route twice, but I usually ended up going in the same general direction, through the docks and toward the boardwalk.    Normally, my father would insist that I bring pepper spray with me, but normally I didn’t have a seven-foot tall brute accompanying me on my jog.    Nobody was going to mess with me while Lurch was following along.    The big guy kept pace with me just fine as we went along the sidewalks of the main roads.

What surprised me was the amount of honking.   It seemed that every car we passed needed to slam on their horn or brakes or both as they gawked at us.  Well, if I was being honest, they probably were gawking at Lurch.  One of the biggest draws of Brockton Bay was the cape tourism, after all, and Lurch definitely looked the part.  No gang member would dare mess with him at all unless they had powers.   Most didn’t.

We made it to the bridge that went over Lord Street around seven, and I stopped about halfway across and leaned on the railing.   I turned toward Lurch and offered him a bit of a smile.   “Thanks for coming along.  Fester has my normal method of protection.”

Lurch gave two groans at that.  

“Fine.  _Uncle_ Fester,” I said, shaking my head.  I still couldn’t believe Mom wasn’t an only child.  I was barely wrapping my mind around the fact hat she actually was _alive_ , but add a family to the mix beyond Gram and Gramps?  It made things complicated.   Moreso than much of anything.   “So, Mom’s really his younger sister then?”

Lurch nodded with an affirmative grunt.   Not a very talkative person, but I could work with that.   It wasn’t as if his groans were hard to understand.

“That means Gomez is my uncle too.   Uncle Gomez,” I said, pursing my lips as I stared down at the moving cars below us.   “He seemed friendly enough last night.”

Lurch groaned.   Guess Gomez usually was friendly.  Even if he was strange.   Both of Mom’s newfound brothers were strange, albeit in different ways, but I couldn’t call them unfriendly.   Aunt Morticia, who had spiders in her hair for some reason, certainly seemed that way as well, and she was _very_ close with her husband.  Impressively so.

“So, do I have cousins?” I asked, and Lurch grunted.   They must have been the two that were in the guest rooms.  They’d been the first to use them since Emma stayed over that summer before Freshman year.   We’d wanted to do one final sleepover before I went off to camp, and then…   Well, I had more self-control than she did, apparently.   “Just the two or...”

Lurch grunted again.   More then.  Maybe some were Mom’s cousins too.   Of course, Mom being alive just made the world _better_.   Even this dreary day seemed wonderful.   Mom just happened to have relatives that were a little on the strange side, but I was sure that if I got to know them, I’d think otherwise. “Big family then.” 

Lurch nodded and groaned.   He then gestured back toward the house.

“Yeah, we can head back,” I said, my stomach rumbling.  “I’m starting to get hungry anyway.”

We turned around and started jogging back the way we came, albeit with some slight route modifications so I could get some more exercise.   Normally I ate breakfast before my jog, but this morning was far from a normal morning.  Still, I was certainly feeling my hunger as we made our way back to the street my house was on.   

I gave a quick glance to the sky and then frowned.   The clouds seemed to be gathering in a specific area, something remarkably unusual.   Maybe a weather cape?   I followed the clouds down, and then I had to actually stop jogging.  The clouds had gathered above the lot two down from our house.  Only I was reasonably certain that the lot had previously been a lot smaller.   It hadn’t been walled in with a brick wall and metal gate.  It hadn’t had a driveway that led up to a heavily dilapidated mansion that could easily have fit four of my house in it and still had room for a few things.    

“Well, that’s… new,” I said.   Lurch gave a groan, and I frowned as I automatically deciphered it.  “Wait, _that’s_ Uncle Gomez’s place?  How exactly did—never mind, I don’t really want to know right now.”

Lurch groaned again.   Evidently it had something to do with the person Gomez had called “Grandmama” the previous night.   Lurch had helped evidently.  Somehow.  

“Okay then.” I ran a hand through my hair and glanced at the house.     I’d figure it out later.   “Food’s more important right now.”

Lurch agreed with me, and the two of us jogged the rest of the way toward the house and climbed the steps.   Lurch followed my lead in skipping the bad step, and we stepped inside.  Then something confusing happened, Lurch walked immediately into the Living Room, but the moment he was out of my sight, the maggots in his arm disappeared as if he had just vanished out of my range.   It was just wrong to have someone vanish like that.   Of course, maybe he actually _was_ a cape of some sort.   I’d heard of teleporters before.  A big famous one, I think was called Walker or Waver or something.  Maybe it began with an S.   Skipper? 

It didn’t matter.  I was hungry, and I could smell pancakes cooking from where I stood in the foyer.   The dining room practically called my name with Mom’s pancakes.  

The smell only grew stronger as I entered the dining room, which was technically a part of the kitchen.  Mom manned the griddle, and on it were two pancakes in the shape of what looked like an old-timey bomb, fuse and all.   Mom must have been making the extra pancakes for my cousins, whom I assumed were the ones sitting at the dining room table.  They appeared to be close to my age.

One cousin was a dark-haired girl dressed in a black dress.  She was pretty enough; her hair was cut in a straight pageboy style, and she wore a bit of black lipstick.  She seemed a bit on the bored side even as she ate some of Mom’s pancakes.   I suspected the guy sitting next to her wasn’t exactly helping.  He was a slightly pudgy young man with a horizontal striped shirt.  His hair was curly and he wore a pair of shorts that went down just below his knees.   He seemed just a bit younger than the girl next to him, and like her, he was eating pancakes.

Mom had given them pancakes before me.  A small irrational part of me was beating the drums of jealousy, but I quashed it.  I’d been on a run.

“Aunt Annette,” said the boy, holding up one of the pancakes that he had.  He’d eaten or torn a hole in its middle, but he was looking toward my mother with them.  “There aren’t any bugs in these pancakes, and they’re completely inanimate.   No movement at all.”

“I know, Pugsley,” Mom said.  “I know.  The ingredients that my husband keeps in his kitchen are a little lacking compared to what we had available to us over at your place, but I’m doing my best.   I couldn’t even find a single live cockroach this morning.”

Well, _that_ was something that was my own fault.  I’d instructed all of the bugs to remain outside of the kitchen for a reason.    I couldn’t have bugs getting into the cooking if they weren’t going to be eaten themselves.   That Mom was looking for a cockroach should have disturbed me, but I oddly found myself wondering what she would have done with it.  I was half-tempted to get a couple just to see.  I chose not to though.

“Good morning, Mom,” I said, finally greeting her with a smile.  She seemed to finally notice my presence as she looked up from her cooking.

“Taylor, good to see you up, my little owl,” Mom said, returning my smile.   She adjusted a pitcher on the counter full of something that I couldn’t identify from this distance.   “Taylor, I’d like you to meet your cousins, Wednesday and Pugsley Addams.  They’re Gomez and Morticia’s eldest.”

“Eldest meaning that there’s more than just you two of you,” I said simply.

“Pubert,” both of my cousins had said at the same time.  I didn’t even gasp at the name.   This was a family that had named their son Pugsley, after all.  I made my way toward the kithcen.

“Hold on a second, Taylor,” Mom said.  “I’ll finish your pancakes shortly, but in the meantime, could you bring this syrup to the table so your cousins can use it?”

“Sure, mom,” I said, taking the pitcher of syrup over to the table.  I didn’t recognize the brand, but it smelled delicious.   I placed the pitcher near my cousins.  “Here you go.”

“Thanks, Cousin Taylor,” Pugsley said as he poured from the pitcher over his pancakes.  He took a bite immediately afterward and let out a pleasant moan.   “Oh, that’s much better.  Would you like a bite, Taylor?”

I glanced at the syrup on the pancakes and then at Mom.  I _was_ hungry, after all, and if my cousin was willing to share, that wasn’t a bad idea.  Picking up my silverware, I took a bite that was soaked in syrup and started to chew. 

This definitely wasn’t exactly any normal maple.  The syrup had notes of apple and a bitter taste of almonds toward the end that complimented the sweetness of the syrup remarkably.

“Oh, this is _very_ good,” I said after I swallowed.  “I don’t think I’ee ever had that sort of syrup before.   It’s definitely not one that Dad or I bought.”

“Grandmama makes it,” Wednesday said, addressing me for the first time while using a droll tone that could easily be construed as sarcasm but wasn’t in this case.   “Cyanide and arsenic give it the bite that offsets the sweetness quite well.”

“Cyanide?” I asked and then it hit me.  Almonds. Arsenic was supposed to be tasteless, but cyanide was supposed to taste like almonds.  I’d eaten _poison_.  How was I going to induce vomiting in myself to respond?  I didn’t know.  This wasn’t… I didn’t want to die to random poison the day I got my mother back or the day after I fought Lung and won.   “Mom, how can we deal with this poison?”

“Taylor!” Mom admonished, and her voice went into full scolding mode.   I’d missed full scolding mode.  Somewhat.   “I know that you haven’t had my cooking in a while, but isn’t this as good as you remember?”

“But the syrup’s poison,” I said.  I carried epipens in my costume’s pockets in case my bugs got someone who was allergic.  But Mom didn’t have any sort of antidote for the poison I’d just consumed.   Which had been _good_.  “Isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Wednesday asked.  “You enjoyed it.   Grandmama will be pleased to know that you enjoy some of her cooking. I’m sure she’ll have other recipes she wants to cook for you from her cookbook.”

“Sounds… good?” I ventured, and Wednesday nodded, her lips quirking slightly albeit not quite into a smile.   I doubted a smile would look right on my cousin’s face anyway.

“Isn’t her cookbook _To Serve Man_?” Pugsley asked, pausing between bites of his pancakes.  

“No, that’s _my_ cookbook, Pugsley,” Mom said as she brought over a cup of juice for me.   “Here you go, Little Owl, enjoy this while you wait.   Will you be wanting some maple syrup or will you be sticking with this one for your pancakes?”

My cousins seemed to be enjoying themselves with the syrup on their own pancakes.   Well, Pugsley was enjoying himself clearly; Wednesday, contrarily, just seemed to be content with her food. If the syrup had actually been poison, I was certain that I’d see something going on with them.  Maybe I could have just been content with what I’d had then.   It _was_ good, after all.

“I’ll stick with this syrup,” I said.   “It’s better than the maple, thanks Mom.”

“I’m glad you enjoy it,” Mom said, heading back to the kitchen, her lacy green dress sweeping across the ground.   “Your father’s not exactly up to Grandmama’s cooking just yet, but he will be, I’m certain.  I’m glad that I have the two of you back in my life.  I didn’t realize how much I was missing you until I could remember.”

“So a different form of amnesia let you remember them and not us?” I asked.   Amnesia could explain why she was gone for so long, but it didn’t explain why we found a burned body that was identified as her own.   Someone screwed up because she clearly was alive and here.

“Unfortunately,” Mom said.   “I’d have brought you and Danny with me in an instant if I’d remembered.”

“Why do you remember now?”  I asked.

“It’s a long story,” Mom said.   “And it involves your Uncle Fester and his late Second Wife.  Which is why you’ll have to ask him.  I don’t have all the relevant details, but effectively, I was struck by a fast-moving object, and when I came to, I remembered you and your father.”

“And of course, she told Mother and Father,” Wednesday said.   “So here we are.”

“Well, I’m glad you managed to remember us,” I said with a smile, and I discreetly planted a small fly on each of my cousins and my mother.   I felt the need to keep track of them. I didn’t want them to disappear like Lurch.   Still, there wasn’t anyone else to tag in the house.   “So, where exactly _is_ Dad this morning?”

“Oh, he and Gomez went out early this morning.  Something about the Docks and Mayor’s office for funding some project.” Mom waved her hand from side to side.  “Gomez will fund the project, of course, but they need some sort of silly permit or another.”

“The Ferry?” I asked.  Dad had been trying to get it working for years.  Funding like my uncle’s would be the shot in the arm that the project needed.

“I’m not sure, honestly,” Mom said.  “I was a little distracted with your father.   So, which shape would you prefer for your pancakes, Taylor?”

She held up the frying pan, and the pancake batter shifted shapes as she spoke.   “Would you like spiderwebs or perhaps a lovely noose?   Spiderweb?  Or Noose?  It’s your choice, sweetie.”

Did Mom know about the bug control?   Wait.  Did she control the batter with her mind somehow?  What kind of cape power was that?   I could have thought about this some more, but I was hungry.   “Spiderwebs will be fine.”

I sat down at the table finally, and I took a sip of my juice.   Light flared off the side of my glass, and I narrowed my eyes.   A fast-moving object flickered in the light and I barely had time to dodge my head to the side before a steak knife embedded itself a good half inch into the drywall.   If I hadn’t had my bugs to warn me, I would have  been hit.   Wednesday had thrown it.

“ _Really_?” I looked my cousin in the eye, and she met my gaze without comment.  

“Wednesday Addams,” Mom chided.  “No attempts on Taylor’s life at the breakfast table.  Taylor, please refrain from retaliating.”

I frowned as I stared my cousin in her eyes.   She was different than Emma or Sophia.  Where the girls at school just wanted to grind me down for whatever reason, my cousin just wanted… something different.   A challenge, perhaps.  The knife was the gauntlet, and given how my cousin smirked, not smiled, I needed to answer.   However, I suspected the breakfast table rule applied to me too.   I wouldn’t retaliate.   I was the cape who, with help, had beaten Lung.   Wednesday was my cousin.   No.  I wasn’t going to retaliate.  I wouldn’t lose, but I wouldn’t retaliate.  That was off the table.

I was going to escalate.


	3. Credo 1.3

“Thank you for breakfast, Aunt Annette,” Wednesday said after finishing her pancakes.   Though her voice remained level, there was a presence and subtle lilt to it that indicated her sincerity.  She stood up and gestured to her brother.   “Taylor, I hope that we get the chance to _talk_ more later.”

“It was nice eating breakfast with you,” I said with a nod.   Wednesday was definitely planning _something_.  I just didn’t know enough about her to figure out just what it was at the moment.  Still, to answer her challenge, I needed to be planning as well.  An appropriate response to the knife would be something a little stronger.   “Talking could be good too.   What are your plans for the day?”

“Given that Father is out with Uncle Daniel, I believe Pugsley and I will head home to prepare for the visit later.” Wednesday gave a significant look to her brother and then turned back to me.   “You, of course, will be welcome whenever you decide to become free.  Pugsley and I will be in the fourth floor atrium playing a few games.”

Pugsley nodded.  “Adding more players is always fun, and since you’re family, you’re more likely to stick around, Cousin Taylor.”

Stick around?   Who had my cousins been playing with before, and what had they been doing? Wednesday, at the least, was clearly dangerous, but something about both her and Pugsley still felt safe to me.   They clearly were different from Emma and Sophia in a lot of ways, and I doubted that either of them would do anything like what had been done.   Still, they’d scared their previous playmates off somehow.   It’s strange how I was more curious than worried.

“What game would I be joining?”  I asked, looking over to Wednesday.

“A classic for us,” Wednesday said, her lips briefly quirking into a smirk.   “The game is called ‘Is There a God?’”

“Oh, that’s a fun one,” Pugsley said.   “You’ll really enjoy it when you come over, Cousin Taylor.”

“I’m sure,” I said.   The game name did not inspire confidence, but it did spark some curiosity.   I wondered how they’d go about testing this.  At the moment, however, I would let them go.   “I’ll catch up.  I’d like to spend some time here with Mom.”

“Of course,” said Wednesday.

“Family’s important,” Pugsley said.   “And Aunt Annette has been missing you quite a bit since the funeral.”

“Her funeral?” I asked.

“Your cousin means the funeral for my dearly departed sister-in-law,” Mom said.  “Fester loved her so, and she loved him.   It was a match made, if not in Heaven, then in the fiery pits of Tartarus, but alas it was not meant to last forever.”

If I had any doubts that she was my mother, Mom just erased them.  She had away with flowery language when she wanted to, and this just fit her.   It was the same thing that got me calling the person I knew as her mother, Gram.   It just… it was hard to see her like this.  Amazing, sure, but hard.   Mom was different, but she was still Mom.   Somehow.  Wasn’t she?

“Aunt Dementia was good for him,” Pugsley said.   “I liked her a lot.   You probably would have too, Taylor.”

Dementia.   Fester had married someone named Dementia.   Who would name their kid Dementia?  I mean, that’s just crazy.  Okay, that’s a bad pun.   Still, what was going on with Mom’s supposed family?  Names, murder attempts… poisons?   They _were_ Mom’s family and brought her back to me, but they just were _odd_.  

“Maybe I would have,” I said, moving the flies I’d placed on my cousins to a more inconspicuous area.   I needed to keep track of where they went from here, so long as it was within my range.   “I’ll maybe come join you in a bit.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Wednesday said.   “We’ll be seeing you.”

I gave a wave as she and Pugsley left the house.  I made sure the flies remained on them and devoted part of my attention to tracking them in relation to me.  It really didn’t take much, surprisingly.   I found I could focus on the flies and the kitchen simultaneously.   Either that was a new aspect of my powers, or I just hadn’t noticed it before.   Either way, I was happy for it because I could be aware of my cousins, albeit without hearing or seeing them, and I could spend time with my mother… whom I hoped really was my mother and not someone _else_. 

I gathered up the dishes from the table and brought them to the kitchen.   “I really should probably be getting ready for school.”

“Not today, my Little Owl,” Mom said, wagging a finger at me in a familiar scolding motion.   Maybe I was just trying to see it, or maybe she was really Mom.   “It has to be overwhelming for you, me being back.  School can wait a day for you to catch up.   I said as much last night.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing, Taylor,” Mom said.  “If anyone at your school has an issue with you missing a day, I can just come in and talk with them to straighten things out.”

Briefly, I imagined Mr. Gladly meeting my supposedly dead mother.   Then I remembered how Mom tended to handle teachers she met with in middle school.   Sometimes Dad had to hold her back or distract her, but he usually succeeded.  The problem was when they _both_ were angry.   Dad had one heck of a temper of his own.

“That… probably won’t be necessary,” I said to Mom.   It wasn’t like anyone at Winslow would really miss me if I wasn’t there.  Emma and Sophia would probably find someone else to bother, and I’d get a day’s reprieve from whatever they had planned.  I approached my mother and wrapped her into a hug.   She definitely _felt_ like Mom, smelled like her, beyond whatever soap she’d been using to hide it, Mom still was Mom.  Tears started coming to my eyes.  “Mom, I missed you so much.   You were dead, Mom.   I went to your funeral.  We _buried_ you.”

“I know, Taylor, I know.   Danny told me about the burial, the body that was identified as my own,” Mom said.   “We may have to exhume the body in order to figure out who she truly was.   Unless Grandmama can just ask her.”

“Why would she be able to ask?” I looked up at Mom’s face.

“Oh, she’s a witch and a fairly successful medium.  It was with her help and Dementia’s influence that I managed to remember you and your father,” Mom said.  Wait, she’d forgotten us?   How could she have forgotten us only to remember later?  “Yes, I’m sure that she’ll help with asking who died in my place.”

“Mom, you said ‘managed to remember,’” I said quietly.  I’d ignore the witch comment for now.   One thing at a time.   “Does that mean you didn’t remember us after the car accident?”

“Unfortunately,” Mom said, wrapping her own arms around me.  “After the car accident, I remembered my older brothers and the address of where we lived as children.  However, I didn’t remember much of my life after the plane crash, just bits and pieces, but I remembered the feelings.  I just mistook them for something else, a longing for my family.”

I leaned against my mother, just verifying once more that she was _there_.  She looked like Mom, sounded like her, and she even had some of her quirks.   However, she had other quirks now that…  I just wasn’t sure.  Mom was different even if she was the same.  “How did you end up remembering us?”

“Fester’s second wife, Dementia, helped,” Mom said.  “Though, that probably wasn’t her intention when she and Fester set off those bombs.   A piece of shrapnel struck me, right in the forehead, and it shook loose my memories of Brockton, of life with you, with Danny, and with the your Gram and Gramps.”

“Shrapnel, from a bomb, struck you in the forehead,” I said, trying to get clarification.  “And all it did was shake memories loose?”

Wouldn’t a piece of shrapnel have left a scar?  Mom’s forehead was as smooth as it’d been the last day I’d seen her.   It didn’t make sense unless Mom had some powers of her own, or she got healing from someone with powers.  I just didn’t know.

“I realize, of course, how it sounds,” Mom said.   “If all it took to recover memories was a blow to the head from a bomb, more people would let themselves be blown up.   Sadly, I think I am a unique case.   Fester needed to get struck by lightning, after all.”

“That’s…  Mom, you got hit by a flying piece of shrapnel; that would have killed a normal person.  Are you a cape?”  I decided to just ask her.

“No, Taylor, I’m not,” Mom said as I pulled away from her.   She didn’t seem to be lying, but it just was weird.   “I’ve met capes, even worked for one for a while, but I was never one myself.”

“But you have powers,” I said.  She had to have had them.  She survived things she shouldn’t have.  She’d… There had been a body that was positively identified as _her_.   I needed her explanation.    If she had a rational explanation for why she could have survived, why she was here now, I needed it.   It was Mom.  She was Mom. She had to have something better.

“I’m an Addams, Taylor, just like you,” Mom said, as if that were enough, as if the past two years hadn’t been hell without her.  “We’re made of stronger stuff, as Gomez likes to say.”

“What does that _mean_?” I asked.  Just saying the family name didn’t make any sense.  Most of what had happened didn’t make any sense.  Why was she like this?  Just being dismissive…  I couldn’t justify it in my head.  I needed to stay calm as I asked her questions.   A low buzzing started in the basement as I focused on my mother.   “Poison, knives, caltrops, needles… The thing Gomez did with Fester last night?   Mom, what did they do to you?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” Mom said emphatically.  Her eyes locked onto mine through both our glasses, and her lips curled into a disapproving frown.  “Taylor, they are my _family._ They would do anything for me, and I would do anything for them.   Kill, die, fight, steal, lie, cheat, whatever is necessary, and some of it’s fun too.   But you and Danny are _also_ my family.  That much hasn’t changed at all.”

“You’re different now, though,” I said.

“Maybe, but so are you, Taylor.   Neither of us are the same people we were two years ago,” Mom said.  “I still remember raising you, though.  I loved reading you stories, bought you that Alexandria lunchbox, and I played the flute for you too.”

I managed to hold back the wince at the mention of the flute.   She didn’t need to know what had happened to it.  I’d try to get another for her.   “You were gone though.”

“And I’m sorry, Taylor,” Mom said, her frown shifting to a reassuring smile. To Mom’s reassuring smile.   This had to be Mom.  No one could fake her mannerisms this well.   “If I could have remembered you and your father after the accident, I would have brought you with me.  I would have introduced you to your extended family, and you could have been a good influence on your cousins while they were dealing with Pubert.   Perhaps we might have even prevented Fester’s mistake with Debbie.”  

I was almost afraid to ask, but curiosity won out.  “Debbie?”

“Fester’s first wife,” Mom said, waving a hand.  “Some Black Widow serial killer type.  She’d stolen Fester away from the family just after I got there, ended up cutting him out of our lives completely.”

“Serial killer,” I said, arching an eyebrow.  “You’re serious.”

“Deadly,” Mom said.   “She tried to kill all of us with your uncle at the end, but she ended up missing a wire and electrocuting herself to death.   Poor girl.  She really was an Addams at the end, even if she made some unfortunate life choices.”

“Trying to kill you?” I asked, needing clarification.

Mom simply shook her head.   “She couldn’t control that.   Her clothing on the other hand….” Mom gave an exaggerated shudder.  “Fashion choices like that aren’t even worth a visit from the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

“That’s not fair,” I said.   “The Siberian doesn’t even wear clothing.”

“Debbie’s fashion choices were worse, believe me,” Mom said, giving another shudder.   “She didn’t even want to be a part of the family in the end.  Now, what happened to you while I was gone?  Danny said that school wasn’t going as well for you, and he told me about an event that happened in January?”

The buzzing in the walls got louder, but if Mom noticed it, she gave no indication.   I didn’t want to tell Mom what had happened any more than what I’d told Dad.   Mom and Emma’s mother had been friends, and if I told her that Emma was leading the bullying, I didn’t know what would happen.   Besides, I could deal with it myself, and with Mom alive, one of their biggest picking points was gone.  I could laugh it off.   Still… January…

“It was…”  I trailed off, thinking on it, but Mom seemed to pick up on my mood.

“It just seemed so amateur, from what your father told me,” Mom said softly.  “Sure, they had to do some preparation and you were in the hospital for a bit, but it was just a poorly planned prank.   Gomez and Fester used a coffin.”

“What?”  I asked.

“For me, enclosed spaces,” Mom said with a shudder.   “Never really liked them.   Believe me, Taylor, I wish I could have been there to comfort you when you needed it.”

“It’s...” I shook my head.  It wasn’t exactly something that I’d say was _okay_ , but it wasn’t something she could help.  Besides, I had powers after that fiasco.  Maybe Uncle Gomez and Uncle Fester’s events helped Mom get hers.   That she still loved them afterward just meant that it hadn’t been malicious the way mine was.   Still… “I wish you could have been here too.”

“Well, I’m here _now_ , Taylor.” Mom smiled.  “I’ll gladly be here with you when you need me.”

“Thank you, Mom,” I said, and I hugged her again.   She still felt as real as the last time.   Then I glanced at the dishes.  “Guess we’ll have to get those done...”

“Yes, well, I have a better way to get them handled,” Mom said as she reached her hand up.  She pulled on a hangman’s noose that definitely wasn’t there before, and a loud echoing scream resonated through the house, followed by a foghorn.  

Lurch appeared in the doorway of the kitchen mere milliseconds later.  “You rang?”

When I say he appeared, I mean that he had been nowhere near my range before suddenly showing up with the maggots in his arm.   I had no clue how he pulled that off. Was he some sort of teleporter? 

“Mom, I know you say you’re not a cape,” I said, leading into my question.   I gave Lurch a once-over, and his formal attire confused me some. “But how did you end up with one as a butler?”

“Oh, he isn’t _my_ butler,” Mom said before turning to the man and giving him a smile.  “Lurch, would you be a dear and retrieve Thing?   I’d like him to give me a hand with the dishwashing.”

Lurch groaned in the affirmative and started toward the door.   He barely took two steps before the door sprung  inward.  The staccato sounds of metal striking metal came in from outside followed by my father and uncle, both wielding genuine swords.   They were those thin ones that fencers tended to use, but these had obvious sharp edges.   Sword fighting.  Dad and Uncle Gomez were actually fighting with swords.  If I wasn’t watching, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Dad was the one on the defensive, backing two steps further into the kitchen before parrying Uncle Gomez’s latest thrust.   Dad riposted with a lunging thrust at my uncle, but Gomez managed to do a parry of his own, sending Dad’s sword flying toward us, point first.   The sword sailed through the air, and I very nearly froze.

Dad, on the other hand, raised a hand to my uncle and said, “Pardon.”   He turned around and dashed after his flying blade, but it looked like it would get to us first.

Mom simply sidestepped and snagged the hilt out of the air with a flourish.   Given the events of the morning, it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.   “Danny, you need to keep a better hold on your weapon.”

“I’ll remember,” Dad said when he got close enough, and he leaned over the counter.   Mom met him halfway, and the two of them started kissing as Dad clasped his hand over the hilt and entwined his fingers with Mom’s.  While I really didn’t want to see them kissing at all, they hadn’t seen each other in so long, so I’d try not to interrupt it this time.   In a way, it was a little cute, even if it was disgusting.   So, instead of watching that, I chose to watch as my uncle came up to them and flourished his own sword in a salute.

“Good show, old man, but you need to be prepared for anything!” Uncle Gomez thrust his sword toward my kissing parents.

The mutual grasp Mom and Dad had on the sword let them parry the attacks as Uncle Gomez made them.  They fought off five or six blows, but they couldn’t follow-up with an attack, leaving Uncle Gomez to do as he would.   Of course, Mom and Dad _still_ kissed, but they held off Uncle Gomez’s attacks, which got more vicious.

“Dad!” I called in warning as I reached into my swarm.  I needed to be ready in case Dad actually needed some help against my uncle, even if it’d out me.   However, Dad gripped the blade tighter and pulled away from my mother.  On the next blow, he locked blades with Uncle Gomez.

“Don’t worry, Taylor, I’ve got this,” Dad said, a bit of giddiness in his voice as he pressed the attack, sweat beading on his brow.

“Show me what you’ve got, Daniel!” Uncle Gomez cheered as he was pushed back.  “An invigorating riposte, old man, keep it up!”

“Since when does Dad know how to sword fight?” I asked, stepping back away from the counter.  It was entrancing, watching Dad and my uncle with their back and forth.  

“Your father has _many_ , many hidden talents, Taylor,” Mom said with a bit of a purr to her voice.  Gross.  “Some that you’re not ready to learn.  Yet.”

Definitely gross.   If I’d had further doubts about this woman being my mother, they’d have flown right out the window with that.   That was something Mom would have said _before_ the car accident.  

“Quite like Gomez in that matter,” Aunt Morticia said as she walked into the kitchen, finally having descended from the upstairs bedroom.  The spiders in her hair continued to just sit there.   “Prideful, deceitful, willing to do what’s necessary to get a win for family.   I can see why you love him so, Annette.”

Mom nodded, her lips quirking into a grin.  Then I felt a weight on my shoulder, like someone gripping it with their hand.   I turned my head to see who or what it was, and a _hand_ sat on my shoulder.  By which, I mean, it was like a severed hand, a right one.   Cut right at the wrist, but there was no blood, just the hand that gripped my shoulder.

“Mom…  what’s—”  I gestured with my chin, afraid to raise my own hands to it.

“Ah, Thing, there you are,” Mom said, and the hand actually lifted off me and waved to Mom.   It returned to its perch on my shoulder, but it was clear that it was alive now.   It was _moving_.   I wasn’t sure what to think.  “Do you think that you could lend a hand with these dishes, please?”

The hand lifted off my shoulder again to give an okay sign before landing on the counter.   It finger-walked over to the sink and jumped over to start cleaning with my mother.

“That’s… When you said lend a hand, I didn’t know you meant _literally_ , Mom.”  I shook my head.   “It has to be a cape.”

“Not everything comes down to capes, Taylor,” Mom said.  “He’s been like that as long as I’ve known him.  According to Gomez, he used to be in a box.”

“Yes, that’s very true.  He’d just hide in the box and reach out when he was needed,” Aunt Morticia said.  “It took a while before he could be coaxed out completely.   He was delightfully dreadful.   Perhaps I should dig that box out again, if Mama hasn’t repurposed it.”

I shook my head.   Mom’s family was just _strange_ , but they _were_ her family, which made them mine.  A loud clang had me looking back toward Dad and Uncle Gomez.   They still were keeping it up, but Dad seemed to be starting to tire.  Uncle Gomez, by contrast, seemed fully fresh.

“Why did they even start this?” I asked.

“If I had to guess,” Mom said.  “It would be because of me.   Gomez is being an overprotective brother, and he wants to see if your father’s worthy with this sword fight.  Think of it like a test.”

“A test that Daniel seems determined to win,” Aunt Morticia said with a small smile.  She raised her voice and said, “Our boys are très competetif, no?”

“Tish, was that French I heard?” Uncle Gomez asked as he and my father were crossed in another sword lock.   Uncle Gomez seemed a bit distracted, and my father leaned into the lock.

Aunt Morticia’s smile remained, but somehow it seemed more mysterious.   “Oui.”

“Cara Mia!” Uncle Gomez practically teleported to his wife’s side, causing Dad to trip and fall forward onto the ground.   Uncle Gomez started kissing along Aunt Morticia’s arms.  “Tish, you know what French does to me; I just love hearing you.”

“Mon cher.”  Aunt Morticia leaned into the kissing, even raising her other arm for Uncle Gomez to continue along it.   The rapturous love they felt for one another was almost palpable. 

I moved over to my father, reaching a hand toward him to help him up.  “Dad, are you okay?”

Dad pulled himself to his feet with my help and planted the sword’s tip into the ground.  “Never better.   Phew.   Haven’t had a fence like that since college.”

“I remember,” Mom said.   “You were as dashing then as you were just now.”  Mom continued cleaning, and the disembodied hand dried the dishes.  It was only one hand, but somehow it managed to flip the dishes into the air, dry them, and put them away correctly before they dropped to the ground and broke.   I’m not really sure how it pulled it off, but I was certainly impressed.  Thing was useful.  For a hand.

“Dashing, am I, mon amour?”  Dad asked, using a pet name that I hadn’t heard since before the accident.   Our family was French on Dad’s side, after all.   “I suppose I’ll have to try harder and assurez-vous de gagner.”

“Oh, Danny,” Mom said, walking around the counter to meet my Dad halfway.   “Don’t assume that I’m like my brother and you can ply me with such pretty words.”

“Ah, but I know how to ply you with other things, ma petite femme,” Dad said as he wrapped an arm around Mom and rubbed her back.  “Four times last night.   Care to make it another five?”

And… now, Mom and Dad were doing something that I had no desire to see in the kitchen at all.   Ever.   It was just unsightly.   I needed to get away, to let them do… whatever it is they were planning on doing.  Without me around.   “I’m… going to go find Wednesday and Pugsley, maybe take them to the library or something.  Maybe the Boardwalk.”

“Just make sure you take your pepper spray if you go somewhere,” Dad said, pulling temporarily away from Mom.

I just gave a mild nod as he returned to his ministrations.   I had plenty of things that were more effective than pepper spray available to me.   I bet my cousins did too for that matter, but he didn’t need to know that.   I just needed to get away from that.

Of course, that didn’t mean that I needed to be unsafe.   I headed toward the basement door.  I’d wear my costume under my clothes and bring some bugs along with me.   My cousins were in their house that had appeared this morning.  I had no clue what to expect.  So, I needed to be prepared for anything.

At least I wouldn’t be dealing with _that._    Danger be damned, seeing my parents do something like that, be _that_ close?  It was _scarring_.


	4. Credo 1.4

I adjusted my clothing one more time as I walked down the street to where I felt my cousins.  My costume would probably protect me from the bulk of whatever they could throw at me, and despite having my face uncovered and not wearing my gloves, I knew that a costume made of spider silk, that _my_ costume would be safer than wearing nothing.  Who knew what my cousins had in that house?  Still, it had to be better than watching either set of parents and how…  I killed that line of thought as I approached the wire gate in front of the house.

I’d seen the house earlier, when I was on my run with Lurch, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that it had appeared overnight.   Cape bullshit, it had to be.   It just couldn’t make sense any other way, and the fact that I could accept that at face value was only the slightest bit worrying to me.  Add the storm clouds swirling around the dilapidated-looking manor, and I got the eerie feeling that I was walking toward a haunted house.  Only unlike the ones that Emma and I had laughed at when we were younger, this one might have actually been _haunted_.   (Okay, I’d been the one to laugh, now that I think about it.  Emma could barely handle them.)

It really didn’t help that the moment I got within a few feet of the gate, it slowly swung inward with a loud creaking noise.   Of course, automatic gates were things that were easy enough to get, but I didn’t see a single motor attached to it.   As I passed through the gates, the air chilled some, and the wind stilled.   The smell of fresh cut grass tickled my nose combined with freshly dug grave dirt.  My eyes flicked around the side of the house.  There was no way this lot should have fit anywhere near where we lived.   I knew that there wasn’t a forest there before, and the cemetery, complete with mausoleums, really shouldn’t have been able to be there.  Whatever this so-called “Grandmama” did, however she did it, it had to be Cape-related.   Only the fact that I could still feel my black widows at home let me know I was still in Brockton Bay.

I’m not sure if that made this more or less disturbing.  

I made my way to the front door of the house.  Just going inside would be rude, and despite their strangeness, my family had yet to actually be rude to me in return.   Plus, they’d brought Mom back home.  They didn’t need to do that.  I was just glad they did. 

The knockers on the door were held by snarling gargoyle heads, and there were two of them, one on each door.  It seemed that the house had one of those old pull-style bells for the door as well, except the rope was tied into a noose, much like the ropes that Mom had pulled at our place… that had no business being there.  

Well, I wasn’t even going to give the worst case scenario much thought.  I pulled the noose, and I heard a scream echo through the house beyond the doors, followed by a crashing of metal, glass and smashing of wood before a pack of maggots literally appeared within my range.   Literally on the other side of the door, the maggots appeared.  I had no explanation when the door opened.

“You rang?” asked Lurch, standing perfectly coiffed in his suit.  I knew that he hadn’t passed me on my way here, yet here he stood. It made _no_ sense if he wasn’t teleporting.  It had to be that.  

“Just give me a second, Lurch,” I said, closing my eyes.   Yes, the black widows were still working.   The spiders in Aunt Morticia’s hair were just sitting there as she—nope, can’t see out the eyes of spiders.   Can’t _hear_ out of spiders, so whatever it was I thought I saw, I _didn’t_.  The flies that I had on Pugsley and Wednesday still sat in the places I’d planted them, inside the house, and the maggots in Lurch’s elbow remained with him, in his elbow.   It really should have disturbed me more than it did that Lurch had maggots nesting in his elbow, but that just seemed par for the course for the cape butler.   “I’m here to visit.”

“Oh, just let her in already, Lurch, she’s family!”  Fester’s voice rang out from inside as he practically shoved Lurch out of the way.  Fester was comically small when compared to the butler, yet Lurch just let himself be pushed with nothing more than a mild groan.  Fester wore the same thing he had on the previous night as he gestured for me to come inside.   “I’m sure Wednesday and Pugsley will love to have you, but maybe you can help me with something first.”

“I’m not… sure…” I trailed off as I stepped inside the house.   The foyer immediately behind the front door was a bit bigger than the one we had at home.  Two lit candelabras stood on either side of a long desk with two busts of a man and a woman I didn’t quite recognize, but they had features that I recognized in my mother and my uncle.  The man’s mouth was a little on the wide side, and the woman had long curly hair.   I got the feeling that glasses wouldn’t be out of place on her face.  “Are those—”

“Mom and Dad?  Yeah, they are,” Fester said with a grin.  The man’s smile simultaneously unsettled me and brought some warmth.  I didn’t know how to react to that.  “Netty dug up their skulls to make the base for them and then she added on with plaster and quick-set concrete.  She won’t say how she got them to look so true to life, but it doesn’t matter.   Gomez thought they’d look good sitting here in the foyer.”

Mom… what?   The busts had _actual human skulls_ in them?  That couldn’t be right. Could it?   I looked Fester over, trying to see if the man was joking, but the grin on his face seemed to be one of pride not mirth.   He was proud of Mom for what she’d done.   I mean, the busts were excellently done, but actual human skulls. Of my grandparents.  In theory.  

“You’re not kidding,” I said.

“Of course not!” Fester exclaimed, his voice indignant.   He leaned conspiratorially closer to me and said, “I helped her dig them up.”

He laughed, and I just gaped at my would-be uncle.   I reached out toward the bugs I felt within my range and I just shook my head.   It wasn’t like grave robbing was the worst thing my mother had done.  Dad had mentioned her running with Lustrum, after all.   I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Lustrum were still around and Mom came back like this.  

I took a deep breath and turned to my uncle.   “You said you needed my help with something?”

“Oh, right!  Yes, come on this way!”  Fester dragged me out of the foyer and into what must have been either the living room or some room that I couldn’t remember the name of.  Maybe it was a ballroom of some sort.  The room, like the house from outside, looked highly dilapidated.  In a way, it wasn’t unlike my own home in that fashion, though our house was in disrepair more due to lack of desire than through intention.   This room, however, spoke of intention.  It was obvious the room was lived in from the way the cracks ran through the wood, the lack of dust in certain areas of the couches.   The candelabras by the two staircases held partially-melted candles, but the chandelier that hung between them was covered in cobwebs.   Whatever had made those webs, they’d long-since died or disappeared.   Two ovular tables sat on either side of one of the staircases, both with a layer of dust settled upon them.  I got the feeling that if I hadn’t been controlling all the bugs in the house, a roach or two would be crawling through the area.

Within the house alone, I controlled a swarm of four hundred twenty-three thousand, five hundred ninety-five bugs.  A good half of that was the termite colony that was located under the house and within its walls.  As for useful bugs, there were four hives of wasps, forty-five spiders of varying species including twelve black widows, two tarantulas and four wolf spiders.  There was also something that felt a lot like a spider, but it was far too large.  It had a simple brain the way the rest of what I could control did, but it was approximately the size of a small dog.   I still had full control over it, but it couldn’t have been natural.

“Just wait right there, Taylor,” Fester said, and he gestured toward a couch.  “Your cousins are upstairs, but you’ll get a real kick out of this, I think!  It’s a blast!”

I just gave the bald man an incredulous look.   If I’d learned anything about this family today, I learned that there was just nothing that I could expect from them that would be correct.   Maybe if I had time to go to the library and look them up along with the capes I ran into the previous night, I’d be able to prepare myself a bit better. 

Fester grinned wider, and he ran to a room concealed under one of the staircases and opened the door.  “Oh, there you are, Pubert.   Why don’t you go out and meet your cousin, Taylor?  She’s Netty’s daughter.   Just hand me that ring there, and head out.”

“Kay!” a young child’s voice rang out from within the closet coupled with a giggle that I swear sounded like it came right out of one of the villains on _Mouse Protector: Justice is Cheese_.   Pubert.  Fester had called the boy Pubert, which made him the younger brother of the cousins I’d already met.   Wonderful.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but to see a young boy, maybe no more than three years old dressed in a perfectly arranged three-piece suit and a pencil-thin mustache confused the hell out of me.  That looked like actual _hair_ on his upper lip.   He had dark hair to match the mustache and dark eyes.   He took one look at me and grinned.   “Taylah?  Look like Aunt Netty!”

“Taylor,” I corrected idly as he walked closer to me.  I really wasn’t sure what to do with a kid his age at all.   Shouldn’t he have been watched by _someone?_ His parents were still… doing _that_ at my place while my parents were in another room.  His siblings were upstairs, and the only somewhat responsible adult around was Fester, and he was digging through whatever junk drawer he’d found back there.   “So, why were you in that closet, Pubert?”

“Hide and seek with Wednesday and Pugsley!”  Pubert laughed.  “I’m a very good hider.  They never found me.  Uncle Fester did though!”

“How _long_ were you hiding?” I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Umm… I don’t know,” Pubert said with a shrug.   “Aunt Annette was here.  I gave her her coat.  Grandmama came down and the house went woosh.”

“Woosh.” I supposed that was as good a description as any to how the mansion ended up on our block without me seeing it there before.  

“Ah-ha! I’ve found it!”  Fester’s breathy laugh was almost contagious as he moved something within the room.  The sound of a bowling ball rolling down the lane to strike pins firmly echoed from back there at that point.  It says something about me that the sounds disturbed me less and less.  I was more worried about what my uncle had found.  “It’s right here!”

“What is?” I asked.

“This!  Check it out, Taylor, Pubert!  It’s really neat.”  Uncle Fester lumbered out from the room behind the stairs holding what appeared to be a silver ring above his head between his right forefinger and thumb.  Now, this probably wasn’t a Ring of Power, but given this family, I wouldn’t negate the possibility right off the bat.  Fiction or no.   “I found this back near Cornell about a month ago, and I just knew that I needed to check it out at the right time.”

“Cornell?”  Pubert asked.  It made sense that a kid his age wouldn’t know about Universities, but I suppose that without Mom, I wouldn’t have known about it either.  She’d worked for the Bay University before her… apparent death.  My mom was always a good English professor.

“So, what were you doing near the University?” I asked.

“Research,” Fester said, and he laughed again.   “And I found this new prize posession!”

“A ring,” I said. 

“Nytra’s ring,” Pubert said with a nod.   “Says so, right on the inside.”

“No, no, my dear niece and nephew, it’s something _more_!” Fester laughed again and brought the ring down to his eye level.  “See, if I place my hand like so, and I twist it like this...”

An almost undetectable high-pitched beeping noise started to emit from the ring.  The beep sounded for one second, then the beep repeated after a second.  Then it repeated again after a half a second.    “Uh… Uncle Fester?  It’s beeping.”

“Good ears, Taylor!”  Fester said, plastering a wide grin on his face.  “I can barely hear it myself, but as the beeping gets closer together, the best part is what’s about to happen!”

“The best part?”

“The explosion, of course!” Fester grinned and held out the ring again, and I took a closer look.  It was a two-piece ring that was weirdly lit up.   “It’s a bomb!”

“A bomb,” I said, looking nervously at it and backing away slightly.  “And you just activated it?”

“Of course!  It’s a small bomb, maybe small-yield, but it was made by that girl who tried to hold up Cornell!  As Dean of Demolitions, it’s my job to evaluate these things.” Fester laughed again as the ring continued to beep, faster and faster, louder and louder.  “I think she was a Tinker of some sort, which explains the small packaged bomb, no?”

“Couldn’t that mean the explosion will be larger than you expected?” I asked, stepping further away while pulling at Pubert.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Fester said.   He then tossed the ring in his mouth and swallowed.   “I do this all the time...”

The beeping suddenly stopped, and there was a faint echo from within Uncle Fester’s body.   He opened his mouth, and a gout of flame shot three feet out, lighting four of the candles on an unlit five-piece candelabra.     He then let out a burp, and a smoke ring came with it.  My uncle _ate a bomb_ , and the worst thing to happen to him was something that appeared to be some form of indigestion.  It didn’t make sense.   Still, he was family, but I didn’t think being Pa—oh, wait, New Wave was a thing.  Maybe being a cape _did_ run in families.  

“How are you not hurt?”  I asked.

“Oh, that was tasty, just a hint too much nitroglycerin.  I need to find her and help her refine her formula a bit,” Uncle Fester said.  “It’s _really_ close to what Gomez uses on his trains.   She needs to adjust a couple things if she wants to increase the yield.”

“That… didn’t answer my question.”

“Oh, I said I do this all the time,” Uncle Fester said with a grin.  “I’m not the Dean of Demolitions for nothing.  I know bombs, and that was a good bomb.”

It still didn’t answer the primary question I had, but it did both answer and create others.   Dean of Demolitions?  What kind of school even had that?  Clearly, my uncle had some sort of experience and Brute capabilities, but really?  A Dean of Demolitions?  And then there was something about the trains.   Uncle Gomez and his trains.  

“Uncle Fester,” I said, looking at the man as I moved some of my swarm underneath the floor.   If he had any more surprises, I was going to have to at least keep track of him.   The problem was the swarm just refused to go near him.   Something about where he stood, no matter what I tried, the bugs would go around, even beneath the flooring.   “Where are you Dean of Demolitions at?”

“Addams Hall,” Fester said.  “I believe we’re looking to open a new branch here in Brockton Bay.   Gomez was out earlier with your father looking for the perfect spot.  I don’t know if he’s found it yet, but we were looking to get a high school established.   I’d be teaching the explosives course.”

“I want to blow up too!” Pubert exclaimed and then let out a giggle.   He then turned to me and whispered conspiratorially, “Uncle Fester makes the best booms.   He does a light bulb trick too.”

“Light bulb trick?” I asked, looking back to my Uncle.

“Oh, it’s nothing special,” he said, but he reached into his pocket to pull out a normal light bulb.   Clearly, Mom’s family had more than their fair share of quirks, and if they were _all_ capes, maybe it made sense why I became one.  I just wish it had kicked in before it did.   “I just stick this in my mouth.  Like so.”

Uncle Fester placed the bulb in his mouth, metal end first, and he bit down.  The bulb started to illuminate, approximately the intensity that it would be coming from a normal lamp, and suddenly some things made more sense.   If Uncle Fester emitted some sort of electric field, that could be why my swarm avoided it, even with my control.   I wasn’t entirely sure how my powers worked, but brains worked on electricity.  If the electricity tweaked my control somehow, maybe they just instinctively avoided it, even through my overrides.

Pubert started clapping, and I shook my head with a small smile.   “That’s actually pretty neat, Uncle Fester.”

He spat the bulb into his hand, and he laughed a breathy laugh. “You’re just like your cousins, Taylor.   The bulb thing gets them every time.”

“Well, then maybe it’s something special, after all,” I said.  “Speaking of Wednesday and Pugsley, I did come here to see them.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” Uncle Fester said.   “Just up the staircase and the fourth door on the right.”

“I’m coming too!” Pubert tugged at my hand.  The little tyke clearly was more aware than someone his age should have been.  It was kind of adorable, even with his mustache that he shouldn’t have had at his age.  Still, he was a kid of capes; maybe there were some sort of mutations.  “Let’s go, Taylor!”

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” I said as he pulled me along toward the stairs.  Pubert’s grip actually put more pressure on my fingers than I expected.  Maybe his cape abilities triggered much younger than usual.  I’d have to do some research, but that could have made him the youngest on record.

We climbed the staircase and went down the hall.  The hallway wasn’t in any better repair than the living area downstairs, but it turned out my mother’s family had several suits of armor that stood along the hall.  What weirded me out a bit was the fact that I swore the suits were all facing outward when we initially passed, but when I looked back, all the helmets had been turned to face us.   Suits of armor didn’t do that on their own, right?  

Pubert and I made it to the fourth doorway on the right and opened it.   Inside the room, I could see a variety of torture instruments, like a rack and an iron maiden.   There also seemed to be a fully functional guillotine at the center of the room.  I say fully functional because my cousins stood next to it, Pugsley holding the rope.  Wednesday held a rolled piece of paper between her hands.   A doll laid under the blade, head lolling backwards.

“For the crimes of adultery, betrayal of the crown, lewd acts, and sodomy, you have been sentenced to death,” said Wednesday in a complete monotone.  

“But I didn’t do it!” Pugsley said in a falsetto.  “I demand an appeal!”

“Denied,” Wednesday said, and then she looked at me.  “Cousin Taylor, would you care to do the honors?”

I glanced from Wednesday to Pugsley and then to the guillotine itself. On the one hand, I’d never seen a guillotine in action before, but on the other hand, they were playing a game with a _guillotine_.  That it was even here was strange enough, but to play a game with it?   The doll looked female, and the head had a luxurious mane of red hair.

I pursed my lips.  This might have been a little mean, but it wasn’t like it was actually her.  “Perform your duties, executioner.”

Pugsley let go of the rope and the blade fell, cleanly slicing the doll’s head off such that it fell in the basket below. 

“And the accused has fallen; Marie Antoinette is gone and there is now justice in all of France.  There will be much rejoicing.  Yay.”  Wednesday’s voice could have shown a bit more emotion, I felt, but it wasn’t entirely flat.    She smirked at me after a second, and said, “Cousin Taylor, now that you’re here, we can play a new game.”

“Oh?  What’s the game called?”  I asked as Pubert pulled me over to a chair.   Pugsley gestured to it, so I sat down.  

“It’s called, ‘Is There a God?’   It’s one of Pugsley’s favorites,” Wednesday said as the older of her brothers came over by me and started messing with something near my arms.  Wait, those were straps.   I tried to move my legs, but my ankles were strapped to the chair too.  I squirmed, trying to get my arm free. 

“It’s fun, Taylor!  You’ll see!”  Pugsley said.   I reached out to my swarm.  If they were going to try and kill me, I wasn’t going to make it easy. Spider.  Flies, mosquitoes, termites, and ants.  I needed all of them up near me as quickly as I could.   The problem was that several of them were blocks away. “You’ll have loads of fun.”

Wednesday walked over to a switch as a helmet was lowered onto me.  Oh, God.  Was this an electric chair?  Was this another form of execution that Mom’s family just happened to collect?  Why did they even have this stuff?  

“Perhaps she will, Pugsley,” Wednesday said as she reached for the switch.  “If, she’s truly family, it’s almost a certainty.  If not, we’ll find out real soon.”

No, I couldn’t just let them do this.   I couldn’t just let myself get electrocuted to death.  I was _not_ going to let my so-called cousins kill me.  I ordered my swarm to attack as Wednesday flipped the switch.

Then my vision went white.


	5. Credo 1.5

Little known fact.  Execution done in an electric chair is actually painless to the person being electrocuted.  It only looks painful due to the way their body spasms as the electricity runs through the nerve endings, causing each individual one to fire off involuntary responses at once.   The reason that many states moved toward the far more painful lethal injection is due to how the execution _looked_ rather than how it actually felt.  

Second little-known fact: spider silk is a good conductor of electricity and can act like a Faraday cage under the right conditions.  Unfortunately, when the electricity is applied directly to exposed skin, this works better at keeping electricity _in_ than electricity _out_. 

Third fact that I just realized as my vision cleared: my cousins apparently _weren’t_ trying to kill me.   Well, they were, but it was in a way that meant well.   Sort of.   I mean, I wasn’t dead, and the swarm I’d set on them had—

Was Pugsley in a sword fight with a stack of bugs?   Two hundred bullet ants, four spiders that I couldn’t identify off-hand, plus fireflies for eyes.  The crazy thing is that he and my swarm seemed evenly matched.  I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment for me or an insult for him.

“Finished napping, Cousin?” Wednesday asked.

I dismissed the swarm away from Pugsley’s sword, dropping a gnat onto him in the process.   I tagged Wednesday and Pubert as well.  Tracking my cousins seemed the most expedient thing to do right now.   “I’m awake.  Could one of you undo these straps, please?”

“Yes,” Wednesday said as she moved closer to me.  “It would seem that you are a good playmate, after all.   Most run off all too soon.”

Why hadn’t I run off, myself?  I guess, deep down, I was curious.   Plus, there was that thing with the redheaded doll.  Wednesday and Pugsley hadn’t even heard of Emma yet, and already I was looking forward to seeing her reaction to their presence.  Ems never really did handle certain surprises well.

“Most aren’t strapped in,” I said, and Wednesday undid my arm straps.  She reached down and undid my ankles too.

“If we hadn’t strapped you in, you would have flailed about and likely hurt yourself,” Wednesday said.  “I would hate to see that sort of thing happen without me being the cause.”

I just gave her a look.

“The hurting yourself, I mean.” Wednesday stood once the strap was undone.  “It’s unseemly.”

“I hurt myself all the time,” Pugsley said.

“And therein, my point is made.”

I rubbed my wrists.  Preventing me from hurting myself ended up hurting only a little.  Thank God for spider silk costumes.   “So.  Now what?”

“Now?   What games would you like to play, Taylor?”  Pugsley asked.  “We’ve got plenty more fun toys to play with.”

“Or, perhaps we might want to ask a different question,” Wednesday said.  “Dear cousin, how, precisely, did you obtain the power of controlling insects?  Deals with dark gods?  Slaughtering some helpless creature and feed it to something powerful to gain strength?”

“Wait, that was Taylor?”  Pugsley asked.  “Okay, that was cool!  Mom had to train her spiders to do the Tango, but they weren’t smart enough to do the Mamushka.”

“If, it was as you think,” I said, holding up a hand.  “You wouldn’t be able to tell anyone.  Not Uncle Gomez, not Aunt Morticia, and certainly not my parents.   Also, please leave Uncle Fester out of it.”

“Of course,” Wednesday said.  “We have to have some secrets from our parents for them to ferret out of us at a later date.   Even under torture will we keep your secrets.  They would have to pluck our fingernails from our fingers, drive iron pokers into our joints, and even then we wouldn’t talk.”

“Sounds like an eventful night,” I murmured with a vague sense of familiarity.   It sounded like something that Ems and I would have watched when we were kids.  One of those things she’d close her eyes during.   Torture never really was a fun idea, but it definitely drew attention.   Of course, there was also the issue of it not really working all too well.  But sometimes the torture was more for the pain’s sake than anything else.  Of course, the movies kind of sucked at showing that, with the faked screams and blood.   I have no idea why Emma was so scared of it.

Of course, that was neither here nor there.  Wednesday promised for her siblings, and they’d guessed already anyway.  The trick would be what to show them.   I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened for Pugsley’s swordfight, but I still had the spiders and bullet ants nearby.  I brought them scurrying, skittering into the room, piling upon each other until I had a tower large enough that the spiders could crawl up it onto my hand.

Wednesday looked on, impassive, but there was a light behind her eyes that I hadn’t seen there before.  “Impressive, but surely that isn’t all there is to it.”

“Wait, there’s more?” Pugsley asked, staring at the spiders in my hands.  I made them wave their front legs at him in an adorable fashion.

“I have complete control over every bug within my range,” I said, my thin lips pulling into a smile.  “All… huh.   All forty-five million three hundred fifty-two thousand seven hundred thirty nine bugs within this house and a few blocks beyond are mine.”

I left unsaid that the bulk of them were in this house.  Only two million were outside.  It actually was impressive that the home stood as well as it did, but maybe it wouldn’t if I moved some of the bugs.  I didn’t exactly wish to test that theory.

“That’s about two and a half million more than the last count,” Wednesday said, a small quirk of her lips appearing on her face for a second.  “Done in less than a tenth of the time.   That is a useful ability, Cousin.”

“Yes, well…” I shrugged.   “It’s a superpower.”

“Ah, one of _those_ superpower,” Wednesday said, a glint of understanding coming to her eye.  “You’re a parahuman in addition to being an Addams.”

“Hebert,” I corrected.  “Mom took Dad’s name.”

“You have Addams blood in you,” Wednesday said.  “Unless you drain it out, it will never leave.”

“Let’s avoid that scenario for now,” I said.  “We can come back to it if absolutely necessary.”

“So, how did you obtain this power, exactly?” Wednesday asked.  “I have never heard of an Addams having a Trigger Event, _causing_ them, maybe, but never having one.”

I frowned.  It wasn’t something I truly wished to talk about.   Just something that had been done to me that, on thinking about it, was less the _what_ than the _who_.  Though even that, even now, I just wasn’t sure.  “It probably was a combination of things, but ultimately it stemmed from betrayal.”

Pugsley picked his rapier up, and Pubert picked up a mace.  “You want us to do something?”

“No!” I immediately said.  Emma was my problem, not theirs.  I was touched that they were willing to step in, but nobody was going to be applying any sharp instruments to Emma but me—that is to say, I was taking the high road.  I didn’t want to let anyone hurt Emma.  No matter what things were like between us now, we had been like sisters once.  Whatever I decided, I owed it to her to handle things personally.

“I’ll be the one to deal with that problem,” I said with what I hoped was a calming smile.  “Don’t worry.”

“Never,” said Wednesday.  “You are wearing a costume underneath your clothing.  Did you make it yourself?”

“Black widow silk.” I rolled up my sleeves to reveal the silk underneath.  “It took a while, but I was able to weave it together.”

A ghost of a smile passed my female cousin’s face.  “Spiders truly are wondrous creatures.”

“They are,” I agreed, and then I clasped my hands together, after moving the spiders that were on them to the other sides.   “Again, please don’t tell anyone this.  Not yet.   You’re the first ones I’ve revealed myself to.”

“Like Wednesday said.” Pugsley nodded, his thin lips pulling into a wide grin.  “Not even if they torture us.  So, what are you planning on doing as a villain?”

I blinked.  Okay, he’d only seen a bit of my costume’s sleeve, not even my mask.  How was it my cousin was assuming that I’d be a villain already?   Then again, he was the kind of person who played “Is there a God?” with glee, not that it wasn’t—well, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.   Just kind of tingly.  

Before I could respond, however, Wednesday spoke up.  “Please, Pugsley.  Do you really think that Taylor would resign herself to merely be a villain?  I know I wouldn’t.  There’s just so much flexibility that is given up locking yourself into one simple side.”

“So, you’re saying, what?”

“Hero, villain?  They’re simply labels.  You’re an Addams.  We are beyond such things,” Wednesday said, and a cold smile came to her face.   “Do as you wish, how you wish.   Cause mayhem or stop it.  Those who would oppose you, subject you, oppress you… well, you can follow the credo and crush them into the dust.”

Wednesday’s words resonated within me.  I know I’d wanted to be a hero before.  I still could be, but the ones who helped me against Lung thought I was a villain.  Heck, Armsmaster wasn’t sure at first.  Other than the chance of going to jail, what did it matter?  I could still do the right thing.  I could still help people, and it really wasn’t like those I’d hit wouldn’t deserve it.  Wait…

“The credo?  Why do I feel like there should be some capital letters in there?”  I asked.

“Oh, Taylah! I know!  Grandma and Grandpa!  Come!  We’ll show you!” Pubert grabbed my hand and started tugging.   I glanced to his older siblings.  Pugsley looked a little less than eager, but Wednesday looked contemplative.

“You’re correct, Pubert,” Wednesday said.   “We should show Taylor our family’s roots, as our parents did.”

“Oh, yeah, and we can play Wake the Dead!”  Pugsley said with a grin.  “They need to know we’ve got more family now, anyway.”

“When you say Wake the Dead, you mean…”  Those _had_ looked like gravestones out back.   Had whatever brought the house here also brought a cemetery?   Neat. 

“You’ll see,” Wednesday said as Pubert dragged me out the playroom.  I suppose I’d get to try the guillotine the next time I was in there.  Just needed the right target.

Pugsley followed his sister, shutting the door behind the four of us as I was led down a rickety staircase by a little kid without a care in the world.   Of course, I remembered running up and down old staircases when I was a little older than him.  Maybe it was something about the age.   Then again, Emma didn’t seem to like them for some reason.

We passed an open doorway, and I caught a glimpse of an old woman standing over what looked like a genuine cauldron.   She smiled at us and waved.  I waved back and glanced to my cousins.  “Your grandmother?”

“On our mother’s side,” Wednesday said.  “Grandmama does most of the cooking, and she taught Aunt Annette some of her recipes.”

“Ah,” I said.  “What should I call her?’

“She usually just insists on Grandmama,” Pugsley said. “But we can introduce you later.”

“Yeah,” Pubert said.  “More important.”

He pushed open another door that let outside.   The grass sparsely scraggled across the sprawling and stimulating cemetery that was easily visible from the house.   It took up a good chunk of their yard.  I could see the marble gravestones in all shapes and sizes, clearly custom built and painstakingly placed in a way that almost seemed haphazard, but there was almost an order to them.   They had the look of having been there a while, even though I knew this house hadn’t been here more than a day and a half.

“So, there’s a cemetery here,” I said. “It was brought with the house.”

“Of course,” Wednesday said.  “We couldn’t leave family behind.”   She stepped in front of me, giving Pubert a look.  I moved the gnat I had on her into her hanging hair as she stopped in front of a gravestone.   There was a statue of woman with suspiciously placed holes in her chest.

“This was Aunt LaBorgia,” Wednesday said, her voice level.  “Died to a firing squad.”

“And him?” I gestured to a grave statue of an overweight man missing arms and legs.   “Let me guess, torn limb from limb.”

“By wild horses,” Pugsley said.

“Uncle Eimar was buried alive,” Pubert said, pointing at another grave.   My lips twitched.  Guess he never figured out the way to survive that.  Of course, some people would cheat.

We passed another gravestone, with a bust of a woman whose hair was spread widely.  

“Aunt Debbie, Uncle Fester’s first wife,” Wednesday said.   “She didn’t like us much and made us go to camp.”

“We _hated_ camp,” Pugsley said.

“I actually liked my camp,” I said.  “The counselors helped my issues a little then.  I was starting to feel better about Mom’s death.  They did mention something about an Indian uprising a few years back, though.”

Wednesday smiled, and it was a genuine one, of fond remembrance.  No way.  My cousins were awesome.  I mean, they had a cemetery in the backyard, and was that a stone couch?   It didn’t matter.  We stopped in front of another, larger grave, where a couple in a horse drawn carriage were memorialized.

“There are our grandparents,” Wednesday said.  “Unfortunately, they were gone before we were born.   Angry mob.”

“I’m noticing a theme,” I said.   “What did they do to cause the angry mob?”

“They were themselves,” Wednesday said.   “We have psychopaths, fiends, mad-dog killers, brutes, pioneers, and now, capes in the family line.  Every single one comes back to our credo, emblazoned there.”

“‘Sic gorgiamus allos subjectos nunc,’” I said, pressing my thin lips together.  I didn’t know much Latin, but it sounded important.

“We gladly feast on those who would subdue us,” Pugsley translated.  “You didn’t grow up an Addams, but you get it, don’t you?”

Oh, I got it.  At least I thought I did, anyway.  Emma, Sophia, Madison.   Lung.   Oni Lee.   Others who would dare.  I had a family who would help if I asked, and together, maybe, we would feast.   I smiled widely and let out a laugh.  I got it very much indeed.

This family was a little spooky, but I kind of liked it.


End file.
